He smiled a little--a smile of the lips.

"It doesn't matter," he said, slowly. "Really it doesn't. You know I
haven't had any for so long that I've quite forgotten the taste of it....
Where's daddy this morning?"

"Daddy and mother dear are saying goodbye to Auntie," the child replied,
making in the oatmeal before her a miniature Panama Canal and watching
the thick cream trickle slowly from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

Blake turned to the butler.

"How is Mrs. VanVorst this morning, Roberts?" he asked. "Still very ill,
sir," returned the butler. "Very ill indeed."

"Not dangerously?"

"We 'opes not, sir. But she's still very low, sir."

Blake turned one fist in the palm of the other hand.

"Why, I though from the wireless that Mr. Schuyler sent me that she was
getting along splendidly. I--"

He stopped, abruptly. There had entered the breakfast room the wife of
John Schuyler. She saw Blake and came forward, hand outstretched, welcome
in her eyes. She had come to be very like her child--her child and
Schuyler's--had the daughter of Jimmy Blair--she was like her child grown
up, glorified into womanhood. Her hair was the same gold-brown, a little